Minivan News was the first to point out that the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the only credible international reporters’ organization, as enjoying a curious and unexplained relationship with Maldives Journalists Association (MJA) which is more known for its shadyactivities than interested in the protection of free speech in the Maldives. The government of Maldives was diplomatic enough not to directly attack IFJ and instead claim that the MJA misled IFJ, as reported by Minivan News.

This unholy alliance first came to light when IFJ took only the word of MJA and published a lot of factual errors about the current situation of freedom of expression ever since President Nasheed came to power. For example, the MJA claimed that Maldives had prisoners of conscience but there has been no political prisoners in Maldives since Nasheed came to power.

The IFJ was later apologetic about it but, perhaps to save face and being a bit subtly defensive about it, the organization to date continues covering almost every media “event” in Maldives, with most recently condemning Police assault on Maldives journalists and even Policequestioning Haveeru journalists over the Facebook sex scandal…

Which has humorously made me wonder whether, since the IFJ seems so interested in even the tiniest things that happen to the free press in a tiny unimportant corner of the world like Maldives, whether this time around too they will censure the government-owned MNBC’s decision to censor the word “cucumber” from the Islamic Foundation of Maldives (IFM) television ad for Sheikh Fareed’s “Farewell” sermon tonight at the artificial beach.

My understanding is that MNBC’s Chief Executive saw that, for the average ordinary pious Maldivian moderate Muslim, it would be quite offensive when a Sheikh (or even a layman) bluntly and quite sexually explicitly utters the words “Allah” and “cucumber” in the same breath. Even a “decadent Western” Maldivian like me, who respects all religions and people’s beliefs and their genders and sexualities, found it offensive that a Muslim Maldivian could utter such unpleasant things, forgetting the reverence all Maldivians hold for Islam. Is something wrong with these Maldivian Sheikhs’ minds?

I mean just the other day they were quite offended when I criticized our local Salafist Ali Rameez for “pulling fake Hadith out of his ass at will in order to brainwash unsuspecting Maldivian women.” I find that more acceptable than uttering the words “Allah” and “cucumber” in the same breath because the first word is the revered name of God and the second word refers to a vegetable which has “offending” qualities (as Minivan News also pointed out) given a Maldives cultural context because of its sexual associations as being a self-pleasuring natural toy naturally available in a paradisaical environment like Maldives.